I was listening to Fox just now, and they ran a report on summer camp for Palestinian children, at which instead of making lanyards and leather products, learning to swim or sail, and engaging in various sports, they are learning to sneak past Israeli checkpoints, and the virtues of dying for the Palestinian cause. You know, the kind of child abuse that Charles Johnson documents on a regular basis.

And then I recalled that people like Human Rights Watch have actually expressed concern about the use of children as soldiers. Surely, thought I, they will have had something to say about this?

I wandered over to see, and sure enough, it's a major area of concern. So I clicked on the link on the right of the page, for specific area reports, confident that I'd find the abuse described above reported in detail, with appropriate opprobrium.

But (and I know you'll be amazed to hear this), there was no obvious mention of it among the reports as listed. Oh, wait, down toward the bottom, there's a discussion of Lebanon, which at least is in the neighborhood. We discover there that some civilians have been expelled from Lebanon for refusing to join a militia.

Well, that sounds promising. Of course, am I cynical to suspect that the only reason this gets a mention is because, according to the little blurb, it is "an Israeli auxiliary militia"?

But of course.

But I wanted to be fair, so I decided to dig down another level, to the latest (2003) overall HRW report on the subject.

This showed a little more promise--it has a section called "ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES."

Surely, I thought, now we'll find out about all of this turning young Arab children into Jew-hating killbots.

Imagine my surprise again, to learn that they discuss:

• Israel holding teenagers in the same prisons with adult men.
  
• Israel using youth as informers against Hamas and Islamic Jihad
  
• Israel allowing seventeen-year-olds to volunteer for the IDF
  
• Arrest and interrogation of children suspected of throwing rocks, by (you guessed it) Israel

Now, arguably some of these, if true, can certainly be said to be human rights violations, but I'm straining my brain to determine how they constitute forcing children to be soldiers, which I thought was the point of this particular report. And as to the Palestinian summer camps that Charles and others point out?

There was no evidence that the Palestinian Authority (PA) recruited or used child soldiers. In May 2002, the PA addressed the United Nations Special Session on Children and advocated the application of the CRC-OP-CAC, which prohibits the use in hostilities of those under the age of eighteen.129 In 2002, the PA also reaffirmed its commitment to the Coalition not to use children in hostilities in a private communication...

...During 2002, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad disavowed the use of children after under-18s were involved in suicide bombings and armed attacks on Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. A Hamas statement in April 2002 called on mosque imams “to give this issue some mention in their sermons” and on educators “to dedicate time to address this issue without sacrificing the enthusiasm or spirit of martyrdom of our youth [ashbaluna].”134 An Islamic Jihad communiqué of April 26, citing Islamic strictures against the participation of children in war, declared: “We refuse any encouragement given to young people that might drive them to act alone or be pushed by others into action. They are not ready and not able to do so.

Well, I guess that settles it. I mean, if you can't take the word of models of probity and honesty like Yasser Arafat, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, well, what's the world coming to?

Well, actually, it turns out that their motto is, like that of Ronald Reagan, "trust but verify." They recommend that "The UN should monitor Qassam Brigades, (Hamas), Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah) and Islamic Jihad to determine whether recruitment and use of children is taking place."

Maybe they might want to check in on Little Green Footballs once in a while.

[Further thoughts an hour or so later]

Maybe they're just lawyering here. Apparently it's OK to train children to be soldiers (including unculcating them with hatred for the enemy--Israeli civilians), as long as they're not actually "used." But isn't sending them through training camps a form of "recruitment"?

Rand, you are forgetting the "But We're Fighting Israel" exception to human rights abuses. Since obviously Israel is the worst country in the history of the entire universe, these abuses can and must be excused.

Rand,

When I read a bit of research on this subject (and you're SPOT on), it just makes me ill. If there really is a bizzaaro world in the universe, it's located real, real close to Israel.

The more things change....well, this cover of Life magazine from June 1970 says it all, really:

http://www.la4israel.org/images2004/life-palestinians-17June1970.jpg

(From http://www.la4israel.org/wordpress/2004/07/13/1788/ )

Weasel words or no, the terrorists have been sending their kids to die as well. The kids just keep getting picked up before they detonate. I wouldn't hold my breath for HRW to complain, though.

p.s. If detaining children for throwing rocks belongs in HRW's report, why don't terrorist attacks where the terrorist purposefully hunts down women and children in their homes and shoots the children in their faces at point blank range?

Weasel words or no, the terrorists have been sending their kids to die as well. The kids just keep getting picked up before they detonate. I wouldn't hold my breath for HRW to complain, though.

p.s. If detaining children for throwing rocks belongs in HRW's report, why don't terrorist attacks where the terrorist purposefully hunts down women and children in their homes and shoots the children in their faces at point blank range?

Bizzaro world describes it perfectly. Tens and tens of millions were displaced, borders redrawn, and entire societies restructured in the WWII era, but only the Palestinians have "refugee camps" decades after the fact. Anybody have any idea how many Arabs called Palestinians are descendents of people who actually lived in the West Bank or Gaza in the 40s and how many have immigrated to serve the cause or collect EU/UN welfare checks?

Once again the fact Palestinians hate Jews more than they love their children is driven home.
This is surely self inflicted genocide.

This begs the question of which side kills the most Palistinian children?

Does anyone have the figures for this?